Dying sun

ONE

I haven't seen the sun in ten years.

Gazing out the window and into the dense grey clouds that permanently darken the sky, I try to remember what it looks like. My chemistry textbook shows a huge ball of flames.

Involuntarily, I shiver. I bet it was warm.

"...Grace?" My mother's voice pulls me out of my thoughts. I turn to look at her. Mama's waiting for me at the door, already bundled up in her old baggy sweater. Destiny is in his chair, playing with the frayed sleeve of his patchwork wool sweater. Mama is smiling at me, her laugh lines drawing attention away from the worry lines on her forehead.

I pull on my oversized coat and follow them, locking the door behind us.

Outside, it grows even colder. The street is silent but for the sound of the wheels of Destiny's chair against the dusty, untarred road. We don't speak as we trudge on, savoring the quiet. It doesn't last long though, and soon people begin to appear. An old woman walks past, balancing a bucket of water on her head. Two shirtless children chasing a scraggly, squawking chicken rush past. A beggar sits against a shack made entirely of wood and zinc roofing sheets, his deformed legs spread out in front of him.

Instinctively, I glance at Destiny seated in his chair. A bright blue ankara wrapper covers his similarly malformed legs. Lack of sunlight means lack of vitamin D, which in turn means more cases of rickets and osteoporosis. The government tries to combat this by distributing free bottles of vitamin D supplements to the public, but their efforts are not enough. It's never enough.

The street starts to get busier as we approach Ajegunle's busy market. Soon, we are engulfed in a sea of colors, smells, and languages. After the ban on gatherings of more than ten people was imposed, the market was the only place people were allowed to meet up and socialize. It's always busy and crowded because of this and we have to struggle through the sea of buyers haggling prices, sellers advertising goods at the top of their voices, and street urchins trailing at our feet, waving their plastic begging bowls.

A group of little ones marks and follow us, pleading for spare change or a scrap of food. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Mama hand one child a hundred naira bill. The boy waves his prize at his friends gleefully as they clamor around him, already debating on how to spend the money.

I grit my teeth in frustration. That money could have gotten us clean water for days. Mama's generosity would soon be the death of us.

One child doesn't hang back with the rest of her group. Instead, she keeps following us, eyes on Destiny's chair. I don't blame her, really.

We had fashioned a wheelchair out of an old wooden chair and two bicycle tires, adding sliding wedges to help balance it and keep it still when not in use. Nailed to the armrests are two umbrella handles to help us push. It looks like something out of a scrap yard- which it is. But it costs nothing next to a real wheelchair.

Finally, we reach our destination: a little shop located on the ground floor of a two story building plaza. Beside the shop's door is a tiny window with a sign underneath that proclaims in faded paint: 'Mummy Jomi's provision shop'. Mama gently shoos the curious child away, and together we lift Destiny's chair up the two little steps leading to the door and enter.

The shop is crammed with overflowing shelves, and it takes quite a lot of elbow grease to move Destiny's chair to the front desk.

Mummy Jomi is seated at her desk, punching numbers vigorously into a desk calculator. She is a chubby woman with what has to be at least three chins, and yet insists on wearing clothes two sizes small.

She looks up as we approach and beams.

"Good morning, ma." Destiny and I greet politely. Mummy Jomi's smile stretches to the size of a plantain.

"My children, how are you?" She squints, appraising us. Something about the way her eyes run over me makes me shiver. I've never taken to her well, unlike Mama and Destiny. Her bright smile comes off to me as shallow, a screen hiding her thoughts.

Mama begins browsing the shelves with Destiny as she talks about inane things like the new price of garri with the chubby shop owner. Bored, I walk over to the window and peer into the crowd.

Some people may find the endless throng of people suffocating, but I find it comforting. It reminds me that no matter how isolated life now seems, I'm never truly alone.

"Thief! Thief! Beat 'am! Burn 'am! Thief!" The cries and chants draws my attention to a spot not too far off from my post. A group of people surround a half-naked, thoroughly thrashed man bleeding profusely. He has an old tire hanging at his neck like a necklace, and the mob is welding sticks and stones, jeering at him as he pleads for mercy.

This scene is not uncommon. An average of three thieves are apprehended at the market daily, and even little children know the fate of caught criminals.

A short dark skinned man seems to be the leader of the mob. He holds a long tree branch, and every now and then, delivers a well-aimed blow on the thief's back.

"Who is this man?" He asks the crowd.

"A thief! Ole! Barawo! Omo ale! Banza!" The crowd roars back.

"And what do we do to his kind?" The leader asks.

"Burn him!" The crowd screams. Blood lust spills into the air, the crowd fueling their hate with more hate. People who have never met before; men and women; Northerners, Westerners, Easterners and Southerners; even children gang up to prosecute a fellow man. I've never seen anything like this before. I've only witnessed this crude display of justice from afar, careful not to get tangled in the web of blood thirst. I'll be lying if I say the eager expressions on the people's faces do not terrify me. These people want to kill. The fact that he is a thief is just a good excuse.

A thin woman in a dark blue lace gown pushes forward, rears on the thief and slaps him.

"Fool," the woman sneers. "This man came into my shop and stole a cup of garri from me! He thought I wouldn't notice!" She hisses at him.

The crowd bellows with sympathy and outrage, their faces conveying how dare he?

A sick feeling gathers in my gut. They want to burn him alive for stealing... a cup of garri?

In Nigeria, a cup is equivalent to a milk tin. He stole a tin of garri.

The horror does not end there. Desperate, the thief suddenly cries out.

"Please! Please don't kill me! My family is hungry! I need to feed them-" The crowd descends on him, attacking with a fervour that has me rearing backwards. They whip, kick, blow and spit on him. Even children too young to understand what is going on join the fray, throwing stones.

"Idiot," the leader sneers. "We are all hungry. You're just too lazy to earn your meal. We sweat blood, starve ourselves, and work beyond the limits of our limits to survive. Then you waltz in and steal another person's hard work because your family is hungry."

The leader turns to face the crowd.

"No food for...?" He yells.

"Lazy men!" The crowd yells back.

"No food for...?"

"Lazy men!"

Even from where I stand, I can tell the thief is crying. Someone brings a can of precious petrol. Another produces a box of matches.

The thief cries silently as they drench him in fuel. Something salty lands in the corner of my mouth, and I touch it to realize it's a tear. I'm crying too.

The leader lights a match.

"Now you'll never have to worry about your family again," he says, his voice surprisingly lacking heat. Indeed, he looks a little sad.

And then he sets the thief ablaze.

An ear shattering scream fills the market, and seconds before he is engulfed in flames, from all the way across the market, somehow, the thief meets my eyes.

Then he is swallowed into the inferno.